Let's start meeting the family part III

This is our beautiful daughter. She is 7 1/2 years old. She is a typical girl. She can be moody, esp. when she is tired. She has been active in cheerleading, tumbling, and horsebackriding. She loves ALL animals. She can't wait until she's 9 and can start handling her own dog in junior showmanship. She loves to cook with her easy bake oven, and make crafts. She did want to be a vet tech like her mom, but I think I have successfully talked her out of that. She now wants to be a model. She had her first published photo this year. She will appear in the Jones Fish Hatchery catalog. Hey you have to start somewhere.

She has always been our sickly child. She has seen a cardiologist for an innocent murmur at 3 months old, a urrologist, and a gastroenterologist. She had a bladder condition called reflux that was diagnosed when she was 10 months old. It is caused by the valve not functioning properly that stops urine from going from the bladder to the kidney. It also made her prone to urinary tract infections. The infections could set up shop in her kidneys due to the weakened values and cause kidney damage. She spent the next 3 years with monthly urine samples and daily antibiotics, that tasted yucky! Every 6 months she had to have kidney ultrasounds and cystograms. Cystograms are terrible procedures where the nurse places a urinary catheter and injects a radioactive solution into her bladder until it is extremely full, then they shoot xrays while the bladder is full and as it empties. All the while it is the parents job to hold down the screaming child keep her still for the photos and convince her it is okay the pee in a pan in front of all these nurses. Real fun. So after 3 years we decided to have the problem corrected surgically. The doctor injects a polymer that slowly biodegrades and forms a lump of scar tissue under the valve in her bladder to position it where it will function normally. The worst part was the anesthesia. I was so nervous. She did not handle recovery well. she vomited from 24 hours afterward and we had to get medication to make her stop. But the surgery was successful. We have been virtually problem free since. We did have one scare last year where a routine urinalysis showed some white blood cells but that proved to be just an artifact thank goodness.

She also has a very sensitive stomach and gets ill very easily. Anywhere from carsickness to just being too tired will cause her to vomit. We never know what we are going to get when we take her out. So we travel with spare clothes and lots of trash bags. Her doctor told us to try to regulated her diet well too.

Since she is our sickly one she gets babied and spoiled, but we still expect alot out of her since she's that oldest. She is my darling and a huge help to me. She is super smart and spunky.